[boost] Re: shared_pointer for C-allocated object?

David Abrahams wrote:

"Neal D. Becker" <nbecker@hns.com> writes:

...

I have some legacy C code that returns a pointer:

fftw_plan fftw_create_plan(int n, fftw_direction dir, int flags);

where fftw_plan is a pointer.

Can I use shared_pointer to wrap it? I guess the issue is that eventually delete will be called on this pointer, but it wasn't allocated with new. Is this a problem?

Custom deleters are your friend. See the shared_ptr docs for more info.

Thanks! Just what I needed: boost::shared_ptr<fftw_plan_struct> plan; plan (fftw_create_plan (_size, dir, flags), &fftw_destroy_plan)